


...And All The Wars Are Done

by AwkwardAnnie



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, Confessions, Dagor Dagorath, End of the World, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-15
Updated: 2015-11-15
Packaged: 2018-05-01 18:12:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5215691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AwkwardAnnie/pseuds/AwkwardAnnie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The stars fail, the seas boil and what was unsaid for millenia might finally come to light.</p>
            </blockquote>





	...And All The Wars Are Done

_Kings of the earth, Kings of the earth, the trumpet rings for warning_

 

The end is coming; Melkor feels it in his very spirit. The clock has wound down, and it ticks out its last seconds slower and slower.

From the pinnacle of his new fortress, he can look out over the barren fields. Nothing moves. The land is wasted, every tree, every beast, every bird long departed. Above, the stars are failing one by one, their long vigil over at last. Arda is returning slowly to its own beginning, and he should be thrilled to see the skies darkening and the shadows creeping back, but he is not. It is too soon, and he is not ready.

There is the creak of a door behind him, footsteps on the stone and a hand at his elbow, and he tries to stop his heart from leaping into his mouth and cannot. Endless aeons beyond the Walls of the World without touch, without feeling, and now it is as if once more he walks in a body for the first time, every tiny sensation a sudden shock.

“How long?” says a soft voice. Melkor turns, and his heart lurches again.

Mairon is beautiful in the fading starlight, ethereal and eldritch in equal measure. He wears the same shape that Melkor remembers, all smooth skin and hair like lava, but beneath the veil of bone and flesh he is changed. Melkor has heard all the tales; how left homeless and masterless he emerged as lord of his own domain and cast his own shadow across the land, seduced blacksmiths and kings and threw down entire nations with whispered words and sharpened steel; how he fell again and again and yet arose from the ashes of each defeat but the very last; and pride is a torch burning in Melkor’s chest fit to ward away the gathering cold. But there is something else there too, hidden deep below the surface, adding fuel to the flickering flame.

“How long?” Mairon asks again, and Melkor realises that he has been staring. He looks back at the western horizon instead. The last of the light lingers there, behind the shapes of mountains and the deep dark sea, and it is growing. Soon they will come, with swords and banners and trumpets, and all things will end.

“I know not,” he replies, and he hates it. Once he would have relished the thrill of the unknown, but now it is too close. “Days, perhaps hours.”

Mairon is silent for a while. Melkor can feel him weighing his words.

“May I speak freely, my lord?” he asks finally.

“You have always spoken freely,” says Melkor without ire.

A smile tugs at the corners of Mairon’s words. “It was my understanding that you enjoyed it.”

“I did.” Melkor does not offer permission, and Mairon does not ask again. He does not need to.

 

_And like the golden swords that ray from out the setting sun_

 

It seems to take a long time for Mairon to get his next sentence in order. So, when he says, “What think you of love?”, Melkor is taken by surprise in more ways than one.

Love. Melkor has heard the word. He has heard it sighed across empty space in the calm before the Song and sobbed between the bars of prison cells. He has heard it spat through Mairon’s teeth like a curse: _You_ love _him? That little Noldo rat? Then prove it. What would you do for your love? Would you die for him? Would you_ kill _for him?_

Yes, Melkor has heard of love, and he has seen it bend kings and beggars alike, and he scorned their compassion and their desire and thought himself wiser and mightier that he had never bowed to so dangerous an emotion. But then his empire crumbled and he was cast from the world, and in that last crystalline moment of clarity before the Door slammed shut there was only one name in his mind and one plea on his lips: _Not without him._

How long had he spent in the emptiness? How long reliving those last few seconds of freedom? How long turning over every blessed, accursed memory until the conclusion was unavoidable: that for all his caution and all his lofty dismissal, love had crept in at his bed-foot like a thief in the night and wrapped its noose about his heart before he even heard the click of the lock. But the realisation came too late, and he was alone.

And now, after the endless tortured nothing of the Void, here he stands before the breaking of the world, in his old familiar form, and Mairon is beside him once more, fair as the dawn and terrible as an army, and Melkor loves him, and there is no time left to do anything about it.

“What do you mean?” he says instead, as if his very being were not aflame with this great aching longing. He looks back at Mairon, but it is the Maia’s turn to stare out, unseeing, upon the desolate landscape.

“Love,” he repeats. “Adoration. Selfless devotion to another. What think you of it?”

Melkor knows exactly what he thinks of love. It is pain and grief and this burning in his chest that will not be soothed. But he replies, “Who can say? It is a condition of mortal creatures.”

Mairon twists at his rings, a gesture of anxiety that Melkor has not seen before. “Not just of mortals,” he says, his fingers coming to rest upon the black ring with its three diamonds. It is not the original, of course; that lies deep beneath the ocean among the ruins of Númenor, with all the other relics of that great Age. “All that I have done, I have done for love.” He smiles thinly, cynically. “Since the day you first strode into my forge and complained of the heat.”

 

_The shout goes out of the trumpet mouth across the hills of morning_

 

And in that one earth-shattering instant Melkor realises that he knows this, that he has always known this, but, fool that he was, he had not understood. Mairon looks at him at last, and in his eyes Melkor can see the devotion and the awe and, yes, the love that drove him onwards when all else failed him, and there are no words for the way Melkor’s soul surges inside him. But his voice is lost and Mairon’s face closes up like a wounded beast shying from the light. He turns away, until Melkor’s hand does what his mouth cannot and catches the Maia’s chin and brings him back.

“How have you done this?” he manages. “How have you carried this for so long? It is agony unbearable.”

Realisation is slow to cross Mairon's fair face. His lips part in an unspoken question and Melkor takes the opportunity to kiss him there, under the dying stars.

The last time he kissed Mairon in parting, it was deep underground with the sound of battle ringing in his ears, and it was rough and desperate and left the bitter taste of blood in his mouth. This time it is slow, gentle, almost tender; Mairon practically melts into his embrace, arms rising to wind about his neck, and it is not fair, thinks Melkor, that this too must end.

The kiss is reluctant to break, and when it does Mairon’s head comes to rest on his shoulder. He seems small, even fragile in Melkor’s arms despite the power that thrums under his skin. Melkor cannot recall a time when he has held him like this, like a friend, or a parent, or a lover.

"My lord," Mairon starts, but Melkor shakes his head.

“Do not call me that, not now.”

“ _Melkor_ ,” Mairon breathes like a prayer, and it is _not fair_. How could this end, when it has barely even begun?  

"It will be glorious," Melkor tells him, and on a whim he bends his head and presses a kiss just under Mairon’s hairline. "We will sweep through them as fire through the forest, and the seas will boil and the land will rend beneath us. If we cannot lay claim to this realm, then let none other do so in our stead. There will be no dawn for them; we shall make sure of that.”

Mairon trembles against him, and his hands fist in Melkor’s shirt.

“I do not want to go,” he whispers, his voice crumbling at the edges.

Melkor has no more comfort to give. Mairon has ever been a rock, unshakable and imperturbable, and Melkor’s words have always been ungentle. Instead, he can only offer truth. “I am not leaving without you.”

The light in the West is unbearably bright now, but Mairon’s eyes when he looks up at Melkor burn brighter still, and Melkor knows with absolute certainty that it was worth it, that he would languish for untold eternity in the Endless Void again and again if he could have this moment as reward.

“Thank you, Mairon,” he says, and he means it. “For everything you have ever done for me.”

Mairon smiles one final, perfect time. “It was my pleasure.”

Above their heads, the last of the stars go out.

  
  
_Wake; for the last great battle dawns and all the wars are done._

**Author's Note:**

> Quotations from "The Last Battle" by Alfred Noyes.


End file.
